


Canyon

by gwendee



Category: Assassination Classroom, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Fantasy, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magical Girls, Timeskips, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:08:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25750363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendee/pseuds/gwendee
Summary: Nagisa just wants his mother would accept him for who he is. Isn't there something to be said on being careful about what you wish for?(Puella Magica fusion, does not require knowledge of the series.)Written for AssClass BigBang 2020!
Comments: 40
Kudos: 78
Collections: Assassination Classroom Big Bang 2020





	Canyon

**Author's Note:**

> "gwen is this what you've been spending your time on" haha yeah sorta
> 
> Hey guys, it's me again! A few notes before we start:  
> 1\. This is a Madoka Magica/Puella Magica inspired work. You don't have to have prior knowledge on the series to be able to read this. If you don't already know about the MM lore, I suggest NOT reading up on it! You'll spoil yourself ;)  
> 2\. There's a character called "Korosenai" in this, and this character is not meant to be Koro-sensei. I did not want to use the canon characters from MM and I decided to borrow the name "Korosenai" because I liked the imagery of it. ("Korosenai" means "unkillable" in Japanese).  
> 3\. Heed the warnings!
> 
> I'd like to thank Livixbobbiex for hosting BigBang 2020, and ColoredMoon for being my really wonderful and talented artist, and everyone who is taking the time and effort to contribute to this fandom! (sobs) (As per their usernames on ao3) 
> 
> Okay, that's it. I just finished a 12h shift, yall who know my time zone know what time it is (hehe), so I'm going to go take a shower and then pass out, have fun.

**Canyon**

**(Impasse)**

_Credit: Coloredmoon (ao3)_

Nagisa’s first introduction to magic is unremarkably mundane. He’s seated on his mother’s lap, aged five and a half, knees pulled up to his chest. She’s reading from a storybook open on her lap. A fairytale, about princesses in spiraling ivory towers and wishes half-buried in the sand. 

He doesn’t remember what this specific story is about, but he doesn’t think it’s that important. He’d go on to read dozens upon dozens more stories and they’d all come together in a bit of a blur, the finer details melding together, but his head fills with the promise and wonder and enchantment of magical enrapturement. 

“But what will I do,” he asks his mother, “when I have to make my three wishes?”

His mother taps her cheek consideringly. “Well, sweetie, what would you wish for?”

She runs her fingers through Nagisa’s hair and as he raises his hands to the sky, telling her about all the toys he’s going to have and all the adventures he’s going to go on when he gets his wishes granted like the boy in the storybook. 

There’s something in that feeling that Nagisa wishes he could find, when he’s fifteen and lying on his back on a grassy field, staring up at the stars in the night sky. He has his hands placed over his stomach, a breeze ruffling through his hair, and he searches for a shooting star in the midst of nothing. 

“Remember,” his mother had said, the book in one hand and Nagisa still on her lap, “it's not real.”

She tells him this so he would settle down, because the idea of magic and wishes and doing the impossible made five and a half year olds unnecessarily excited, but it was supposed to be nearly time for bed. She hadn’t said it to crush his spirit or any of the sort, not in the malicious sort of way where a bitter elderly man would tell scurrying children that Santa Claus wasn’t real on Christmas Eve. She’d simply wanted to get him prepared for a bath but he'd been adamantly holding onto a shiny toy in his hands, looking at it like he's waiting for it to grant a wish. 

At the face Nagisa makes, she hastily corrects, "wishes are what you make them to be. If you wish for something, it might not come true. Sometimes you still have to work for it."

Nagisa puts the ball away and feels a little listless. That feeling he feels is inconsequential, but it’s not something he forgets.

“Okay,” Nagisa says. 

A lot of things, Nagisa thinks, are real, even if they seem like they aren't. (He does wonder if the reverse is true. Could something not be real even if it seemed so much like it was?) 

Wishes and wish granting, for one, are very much as real in life as they are in a storybook. 

His mother had been right, by all accounts. You had to work for what you wished for. 

Nagisa didn't quite know what he wanted for his future yet, but the pamphlet for that Middle School sounded pretty good - or at least that was what his mother said. 

And this was when he had still been wishing for what she wished for him to be, (long hair down to his shoulders and his lashes long and lips red,) so he works for the grades and enrolls into that Middle School she likes.

One of the first friends Nagisa makes in Middle School is a boy named Karma Akabane. He has a bright shock of red hair, a smile as sharp as a knife, and a fervent love for strawberry milk. He brings a carton from home to sip on before class starts, then buys another carton from the vending machine in the cafeteria during recess. Sometimes when they walk together after school and Karma’s feeling particularly antsy, he buys a third carton of strawberry milk and grins around the straw when Nagisa asks how Karma can stand to drink that all day.

Endearingly enough, it’s one of the uniquely Karma traits that Nagisa has grown unnecessarily fond of. It’s funny, because it’s the one thing about what Karma does that stays stubbornly the same, because he’s unpredictable in every other thing that he does.

“If I decide to switch it up one day,” Karma jokes, “I’m probably an impostor.“

“No one else could be as weird as you,” Nagisa tells him, "they couldn't impersonate you if they tried." 

Karma lets out a bark of laughter. "Then maybe it would be a sign that you're going insane," he says, recklessly throwing an arm around Nagisa's shoulder.

The second friend Nagisa makes in Middle School is a girl named Kayano Kaede. She has long green hair which she ties up in two twin tails on the top of her head, bright eyes that glittered when she got excited, and she was shorter than Nagisa.

Not that Nagisa thought height was an important qualifier in friendship! But, Nagisa’s much shorter than a lot of people in their class, including a good number of the girls. He likes standing next to Kayano, and she smacks him over the head (because she’s not that much shorter than him) whenever he brings it up. Which is once, because he’d learnt his lesson to never do it again. 

Nagisa remembers talking to Kayano for the first time. Their teacher had lined them up by height for an activity of some sort, the kind of game which Nagisa had desperately wished he’d outgrown in elementary school, because he didn’t like being short. Especially when all the guys were far taller than he was, and he’d often stood at the front of the line while they got to hang out at the back. It was admittedly a little shallow to consider height a trait of masculinity, but Nagisa had considered it a “rite of passage”, especially when his mother commented that he was the perfect height for heels and if he grew any taller it would make him too tall to wear them.

So he stood at the front of the line, briefly wondering if he should stand on his tiptoes until he hears the teacher admonish someone for doing so. Then Kayano steps up in front of him, a hand on her head, lips pursed in concentration as she tries to line the top of their heads together to see who surpassed the other by a centimeter.

“My ponytail is taller than you,” Kayano says, after a beat of silence between them, (but the boys in the back of the line are still fighting for dominance over who had an inch over another. Their teacher is choking on a lot of poorly disguised laughs. Nagisa can hear Karma yelling.)

“But without it, I’m taller,” Nagisa says.

“Yeah,” Kayano says, “I don’t think hair counts anyways.” She straightens up and positions herself on his left. Then she looks at him. “Why’s your hair so long?”

“My mom likes it that way.” It’s down to his shoulders, and he’d tied it back in a ponytail. His mother thought his hair was the perfect length for braiding, but he'd convinced her that too elaborate designs were unsuitable for school. Simple fishtail braids easily come undone, so he’d taken to undoing them on the bus to school and telling her after that it had come loose through the day and he didn’t know how to do it back up. 

Kayano frowns at him. “That’s why you look so short.”

Nagisa touches his hair lightly, looking confused. “Does it?”

“I bet it took you a long while to tell I’m shorter than you,” Kayano says. “Because of my hair. You should tie your hair at the top of your head like mine.” She has an extra elastic around her wrist, so when she ties Nagisa’s hair up she uses two different colors - two pigtails at the top of his head, fluffs them out and stares proudly at her work. She points to their reflection in the window across them, where Nagisa can see both him and Kayano standing shoulder-to-shoulder, hair all done up. “See? You look taller.”

“I don’t feel taller,” Nagisa says.

Kayano laughs, her voice sounding far away, like she’s talking about something else entirely. “Remember, height is just an illusion.”

"And hair?" Nagisa says, sounding unsure. 

Kayano blinks once, twice, then shrugs. "Sure. Hair could be an illusion if you wanted it to be. Anything could. It's just a matter of how you think of it." 

Karma Akabane never quite has anything to say when it’s his turn to tell the class about what he did during his weekend. Nagisa once saw him sign his own forms even when they were not supposed to, and he never had anyone come to their parent-teacher meetups even though his mom turned up every single time. 

“They’re successful businessmen,” he would say with a bit of awe and pride in his voice, like they’re on a level he can’t quite reach. “They’re travelling all the time!” 

He always smiles with a smile that never reaches his eyes when he talks about them, which is not often, and always shrugs when someone asks when they are coming back. 

“You know,” he tells Nagisa once, when they’re both sitting at the edge of a rooftop, legs dangling over the parapet. “I don’t think I want my parents to come home.”

Nagisa doesn’t really remember what they were talking about. 

Kayano doesn’t talk about her parents, either, but she talks a lot about her sister. 

“Why do you guys have such different names?” Karma says, nose wrinkled. Nagisa was thinking that too, but he didn’t want to be rude.

“We have different dads,” Kayano says. “My mom wanted to name me Akari, like Aguri, but my dad didn’t want to.” She pauses. “He doesn’t like sis very much.”

Kayano’s father disliking her elder half-sister was an understatement, Nagisa thinks. Much later he finds out that he’d essentially tried to sell her to a rich businessman who didn’t love her for the dowry. And then he tries his best to be grateful, because even though his mother didn’t understand him, she loved him so much that Nagisa knew she wouldn’t ever let go of him. It may have been suffocating at the worst of times, but he tries his best to count himself as lucky, because she was always there for him and she loved him and Karma didn’t know if his parents were even planning on coming back. 

Karma and Nagisa hang out a lot after school. Karma has met his mother once, and she’d seemed to really approve of him. She liked that Karma was a tall, nice-looking young man, and she liked it even more that Karma was among the top few in class academically, and she said very loudly that she was glad Nagisa had a good influence in his life, to which Karma and Nagisa had to exchange surreptitious looks because Karma was what Nagisa affectionately dubbed a menace to society 

After that she always seemed to Nagisa about Karma with a suggestive lilt in her voice and she raised her eyebrow everytime Nagisa brought him up at dinner, like she couldn’t wait to bundle Nagisa up in pretty cloth and walk him down the aisle. 

They weren’t like that, of course, and even if they were it was just far too early to be thinking about anything of the sort. (Nagisa always got the impression that his mother wanted to live vicariously through him.) 

And, well, she’d always seen things the way she wanted to see them. 

People always talked about Karma and Nagisa as _Karma and Nagisa_ , as if they were always attached at the hip. They weren’t, because Nagisa hung out with Kayano a lot often as well and Karma liked to do things on his own, but it doesn’t stop their classmates from poking their heads around, “where’s Karma and Nagisa?” Even though they might be just looking for one of the pair, and they always looked so unnecessarily perplexed when they locate Nagisa (in the cafeteria, sitting across Kayano, who’s so absorbed in her pudding she didn’t notice someone come by) and couldn’t find Karma with him.

Nagisa thinks it should maybe bother him a lot more than he does, but he doesn’t mind being associated with Karma. He does wonder sometimes if it bothered Kayano, even though she didn’t show it if it did, because Kayano was as much of a friend to Nagisa than Karma was to him. 

She didn’t seem to have other friends as well, because sometimes when Nagisa was with Karma they would see Kayano sitting alone, and it would take a shared look before they went forward and joined her.

Nagisa always wondered what Kayano was thinking. She seemed to be the cheerful bubbly sort of girl, but when she thought no one was looking her smile dropped and she gazed out the window like she was wishing for something that would never come true. 

Sometimes Nagisa and Karma would invite her for a meal or an after school study session, but Kayano always politely declined before walking off like she had somewhere to be. Which was strange, in Nagisa’s opinion, because Kayano often spoke about her sister like she wished neither of them would go back to the house they lived in. That’s something Nagisa understands, because while he loves his mother, he liked staying outside for as long as he possibly could before she called him and asked him to come home. 

(Karma teases Nagisa when he would pick up a call from his mother, but Nagisa thinks Karma wished he would get those kinds of calls too.) 

So more often than not Kayano walked home alone, waving goodbye to Nagisa and Karma at the school gates because she lived in an opposite direction. Karma and Nagisa would turn around and head to any place Karma fancied, a mall or a fast food court or a park, and Karma would drink that little packet of strawberry milk he picked up from the vending machine at school. They would hang out and do their work until Nagisa had to go back for dinner.

It was a perfectly fine arrangement, and Karma’s whims sometimes took them to pretty fun places, like a back alley to pet some stray cats or the rooftop of a building they probably weren’t allowed in that had a fantastical view of the city. Sometimes they would find a nice cool corner and crack open their books and Karma would work his way through their homework packets with scary efficiency, and he would punctuate their silence with an observation in their environment like how a cat just ran past chasing a bird or how a leaf was falling through the cracks of a drain to Nagisa’s right. 

One unremarkably mundane Tuesday afternoon, Karma tells Nagisa about an abandoned warehouse of sorts he’d seen when he walked a new route to school one morning - and after some cajoling, he’d convinced Nagisa to come check it out with him. Karma has his bag slung over his shoulder, and he slips through a little part of a wire fence that someone prior to them had taken a pair of bolt cutters to. Nagisa goes in after him.

“Aren’t we trespassing?” Nagisa asks, even though he knows that if they were, Karma wouldn’t care.

“There’s no one around to say we did,” Karma says, an easy smile on his face. “Come on. There’s always stuff left behind by workers, maybe we can find something cool.”

A draft blows in through the exposed walls from where Nagisa assumes there used to be windows, and light filters in through cracks in the ceiling. Their footsteps echo.

Then something darts by in his periphery.

“Something just ran by!” Nagisa shouts. 

Karma’s head snaps over in his direction. “It’s probably a stray cat. There are tons around-”

“There!” A shadow of something slinks past and vanishes in the gap between two pillars.

“Oh! I saw that!” Karma says. He adjusts his bag and starts running. “Let’s go!”

“Wait for me! Karma!” Nagisa clambers after him. 

Karma chases the cat and Nagisa chases after him, jumping over beams and ducking around corners, until he abruptly stops and motions for Nagisa to be quiet. “It’s there,” Karma mouths, finger pointing to a hole in the wall, where something small can be seen scurrying about in the darkness. 

Nagisa creeps up behind him. “You scared it,” he abdominishes Karma. “It won’t come out now.”

Karma gets down on a knee. “Here, kitty kitty.”

“Don’t stick your hand in the hole, it might bite.”

Karma snickers. “It’d be fine. Here, kitty.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and turns the torch on. “I want to see what it looks like.” 

“Fine,” Nagisa says. “Then we can leave it alone. You scared it chasing it around, it won’t come out.” 

“I’ll take a picture,” Karma says eagerly, and Nagisa shines the light into the hole. 

“That’s not a cat,” Karma says slowly. 

The… thing writhing into the dark is… not an animal Nagisa recognizes. Nagisa takes a step back-

-and whatever it is, _whatever the fuck it is_ , too many squirming limbs, darts out between Nagisa’s legs and takes off.

Nagisa screams. Karma falls onto his ass with a shout. Then he’s clambering to his feet, eyes wide. “Come on! Let’s go catch whatever the fuck that is!”

“Are you insane?!” Nagisa shrieks after him, but Karma is already sprinting deeper into the warehouse.

Nagisa goes after him, again. What else can he do? He leaps over fallen beams and concrete slabs and yells after his idiot friend that he’s not keen to be part of an alien laboratory test like that not-cat and can they please get out of here before they’re part of a government experimentation scheme, 

and then he realizes he can’t find Karma anywhere.

“Karma?!” Nagisa yells, and his voice echoes dozens of times into nothing. Another draft blows by and he shivers. He can hear Karma, running somewhere in the building. Maybe it’s his mind. Light is streaming in through cracks in the ceiling. There are shadows of things that aren’t there. 

Nagisa’s thinking too much.

Karma’s going to find the cat. It’s going to be a normal tabby cat, and Karma is going to say the shadows were playing a trick on them. They’ll let the cat go outside. Nagisa needs some air.

“I’m going back outside!” Nagisa yells out into the warehouse. It echoes. A chill crawls up Nagisa’s spine - that’s something out of a nightmare. God, where’s Karma? Nagisa’s never letting him talk him into doing anything ever again.

He turns around to retrace his own steps, but the walls look the same. This place is huge. So much bigger than it looks. Nagisa should just move. If he moves in one direction, he’d find an exit. Or a wall, that he can follow. He should walk. This place is creepy. He's never listening to Karma again. He takes a step forward, and a piece of rubble crunches under his heel. 

A noise in the distance! Is that Karma? Nagisa can’t tell. It’s echoing, Nagisa can’t tell where it comes from.

“I hate this place.” He keeps walking. And then suddenly the floor is gone, it opens under Nagisa’s feet, he’s falling, it’s pitch black, his hands try to grab onto something, there’s nothing-

-something yanks him back and he crashes to the cold hard floor. 

He’s on his hands and knees, blood is pounding in his ears. The floor is here again. It’s hard, solid, stable. It’s dusty. Was that vertigo? Is he hallucinating? 

He hears a derisive snort and looks up.

“Boys,” Kayano huffs, crossing her arms. “You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?”

“K-k-kayano!” He stammers, jumping to his feet. “Where- Karma- there was a monster cat- I’m lost-”

“I know,” Kayano says. How she threaded the bits and pieces of Nagisa’s narration into something mildly coherent is beyond him. “Let’s go.”

“Wait-”

Karma’s on the ground, braced against the wall. His gaze snaps to Kayano and Nagisa when they round the corner into his view. He looks scared. “What is going on?”

“Where are we?” Nagisa asks.

Kayano gives Nagisa a funny look. “You’ve been here before.”

Nagisa’s head swims. “...No!” 

Kayano blinks for a moment, disoriented, then she looks back at Nagisa like he’d never said a thing. “We’re in a labyrinth.”

This, Nagisa thinks rather hysterically, must be what a migraine looks like. 

The creature (Kayano had called it a Witch) in the large room (they’re not in the warehouse anymore, Nagisa doesn’t know when the warehouse stopped and this… “labyrinth” started, he was running and running and Kayano was in front of him and then the floor wasn’t grey anymore, and then Karma was there,) and the monster with too many tentacles and eyes and teeth twists and turns as Kayano fires at it. She pulls guns out of thin air and then drops them and dances out of the way of snaking black tendrils like she’s been doing this for all her life.

The not-cat Karma and Nagisa chased after is there, and it’s jaw cracks and elongates to reveal rows and rows of needle teeth. Kayano sends the narrow end of a musket down into its skull, and it crumples to the ground.

Nagisa cannot describe the labyrinth or the Witch that inhabits it, not even if he tried his best. It was nothing and everything all at once, hideous patchworks sewn into something incoherent like nails on a chalkboard. 

"Remember," Kayano says, turning back to look at them with something akin to pity in her eyes. "Nothing you see is real." 

And she blows the Witch into bits of nothing. The labyrinth dissipates into the air, leaving the three of them in the warehouse that Karma and Nagisa had first entered.

Kayano tells them everything else a bit later, when they’re sitting on a rooftop overlooking the city. They’d quickly made themselves scarce after the warehouse. She has her legs crossed, and there’s a little yellow blob on her lap, with a wide grin on his face.

“This is Korosenai,” Kayano tells them, patting it absently.

“Unkillable?” Karma says.

“Yes,” Korosenai says. Its mouth does not move.

Korosenai explained to him once, a long time later, about the cycle of the universe. He’s lying on his back in an open field. There are stars patterned like diamonds on a tapestry over his head, blinking in and out of existence.

Nagisa imagines sewing rhinestones into cloth. He’d tried it once, but he ended up disliking the pattern and using a pair of scissors to rip out the thread. He’d accidently cut a tiny hole in the fabric, and luckily his mom didn’t notice the difference.

“One of these days,” Korosenai tells him, “the universe will be unable to sustain the energy it produced and collapse in itself. Before that happens, you come in.”

“Or I suppose you won’t be called magical girls,” Kayano says, head tilted with a wry smile on her lips. “But the concept is the same.”

“These dark creatures called Witches could lead to the end of the world as we know it,” Korosenai tells them. “They could be kept at bay, with your help. You’ve seen yourselves how their power manipulates the very fabric of reality, turning the world around them into twisted labyrinths. Your job will be like Kayano’s, which would be to eliminate the threats as they surface.”

It pauses. “Of course, for your services, there will be a one-time compensation.”

“Compensation,” Karma says, eyes glinting with interest.

“Oh, yes,” Korosenai says. “You will be granted any one wish of your own choosing.”

Any one wish?

“Without worldly restrictions of any kind,” Korosenai says flightily, “whatever your heart desires, the magic will take care of it.”

“What did you wish for, Kayano?” Nagisa asks.

Kayano stands up, displacing Korosenai from her lap. She heads over to the edge of the roof and leans against the parapet, her hair whipping in the wind. Behind her, the city is washed in white midday light. 

Kayano often spoke about her sister like she wished neither of them would go back to the house they lived in, like she wished she was old enough to make the decisions she said Aguri couldn’t do. It seems like she hadn’t needed to grow old after all.

Kayano’s eyes are bright, and her voice sounds like twinkling bells and fairy lights. “I wished for my sister to be happy.”

Suddenly they’re caught up in a whirlwind. Bright lights and magical weapons and the exhilaration of power thrumming in their blood. 

“There are labyrinths hidden in plain sight,” Kayano tells them. She holds her soul gem in her palm. “These are able to act like a compass, to help you locate them before they fully manifest. What you saw at the warehouse was a labyrinth, which is essentially what a Witch creates. If they harness enough power, they start to destroy reality and their effects can be seen by common folk, like the both of you before you got your powers, so we have to quickly locate and destroy them. Once we kill the Witch, the labyrinth would disappear on its own.”

Soul gems are little embellished gemstones shaped like an egg that hold the source of their power. They have to keep it on them at all times, Kayano instructs, and it allows them to transform into their armor and harness their weapons. She puts hers in her pocket. 

Nagisa’s is blue, and aptly enough Karma’s is red, and Kayano’s is green. “I doubt it’s modelled after hair color,” Kayano says, “but that’s a funny thing.” She touches her hair absently. “Green isn’t even my real hair color.”

“Oh?” Karma says. “What is it?’

“Black,” Kayano says. “Oh, speaking of!” 

She holds out her own soul gem, and turns it around to show Karma and Nagisa the little tint of black at the base of the gem. “After each fight, because of the power usage, they lose a bit of their efficacy and become dark. We have to cleanse them.”

She digs something out of her pocket and pulls out another peculiar object, a little black ball with a spindle through it. It looks to be about slightly smaller than a soul gem. “This is a grief seed,” she says. “I suppose they can be called the souls of Witches, and they can be harvested after you defeat a witch.” 

“Like monster loot,” Karma says, rocking on his heels, “for a video game.”

“Yes, exactly like that,” she says. “You can use the grief seeds to cleanse the soul gems, by holding them together like so.” She taps one end of the grief seed spindle to the black tint on the soul gem, and they watch in awe as the black seems to recede from the gem and be absorbed into the seed.

“Sadly they’re only good for one use,” Kayano says, “but they can cleanse any amount of darkness in the gems, so you don’t have to use them so frequently. How dark your gem becomes after each fight varies with the amount of power you use.”

“What happens if we don’t cleanse our soul gem?” Karma asks. Nagisa’s been wondering that too. “If it goes completely dark?”

Kayano pauses for a while, staring inquisitively. “I don’t know,” she says finally. “I haven’t experienced it yet. I suppose you won’t be able to use your power to fight witches, which means you won’t be able to harvest the grief seeds to cleanse your soul. I guess it’d be the end of that cycle.”

She tosses the grief seed into the air behind her. “We won’t be needing that anymore.”

(When Nagisa had been younger, his mother would read fairytale storybooks to him while playing with his hair, and like other little children Nagisa would have his dreams filled with the fantasy of magical fairies and wands and wishes.

Karma, on the other hand, sat in front of the television and watched for hours on end people with gadgets and technology and the sci-fi filled adventures they would go on.. “Science fiction is fantasy in itself,” Karma would argue, “magic too runs on its own set of laws and principles, and is just a form of science we don’t understand. The better thing about sci-fi with the direction technology is developing, all the futuristic technology will one day exist!”

Of course Nagisa has an argument for fantasy too (albeit less eloquent). “Are you going to tell me magic isn’t real, and isn’t currently attainable? Look at me. Look at me in the eyes, Karma, and tell me magic isn’t real.”

Karma would stare at him, and he wouldn’t be able to cross his arms because he’s holding a sharp blade he’d conjured from thin air. But he’ll roll his eyes and try his best to convey that attitude. “Fine,” he says, turning his nose up, “you make your point.”

Kayano laughs at them.)

They don’t choose their outfits or their weapons. The soul gem already has something prepared for them - the first reveal is always a surprise. 

“It’s a flashy outfit,” she says. “Don’t be too alarmed, you’ll get used to it. There’s no need for stealth in this line of work, and you’ll find that your clothes may look impractical at first glance but can actually be assets.”

The soul gems hold the source of their power and their weapons, and activating it to equip their fighting gear came almost as an instinct - you know, after a while. Nagisa remembers feeling a little awkward the first time when Kayano instructed him and Karma to balance the little egg on their palm and hold their hands in front of them (standing in a triangle, it was a little bit like an elementary school group bonding activity). 

“The intent has to be there,” Kayano says, looking at them in amusement. Karma and Nagisa stare back blankly. “You can’t just hold it out. Think about harnessing your power.”

“I don’t know what that’s supposed to feel like,” Karma says, a little frustratedly embarrassed. Nagisa echoes the sentiment.

Kayano gives him a flat stare. “Think about kicking someone’s ass.” 

Then there’s such a bright flash of light that Nagisa has to shield his eyes with his non-egg holding hand and look away. In the next blink the light dissipates, and Nagisa looks up. 

Karma is… bedazzled, is the word Nagisa would use. He hadn’t seen Karma in such bright colors in… well, ever.

“You look like a power ranger,” Kayano says.

Karma’s frantically patting himself down. There’s a red flush on his cheeks, making him look like a tomato and along with the rest of his outfit… well, they seem to be taking to the color scheme pretty well. “Oh my god,” he says, voice coming out in a funny squeak. Then shoots Nagisa a glare when he fails to hide a giggle behind his hands.

Kayano laughs out loud. “It’s not so bad,” she says, and flicks her wrist. A shimmery veil of light envelopes her, and then she’s standing with the first fighting dress Karma and Nagisa saw her in. 

It doesn’t look a single bit practical. “I look like a poofy cupcake,” Kayano says, and spins around for a little flair. There are many ribbons on her dress - they twirl prettily. “You don’t look so bad.”

“At least it fits your aesthetic,” Karma says, mortified. He has his arms crossed around his chest. He looks odd without his black blazer, Nagisa thinks. 

“Well?” Karma says. “Nagisa, your turn.”

“I don’t, ah, really know how to picture… beating someone up,” Nagisa says.

“You’re right, you’re rather passive,” Kayano muses. “I bet you’ll get a long-range weapon… maybe guns like mine? Well, we’ll find out soon.”

“Think about…” Kayano says. “Hm… what did you wish for?”

When Nagisa was old enough to wish for things that weren’t what his mother also wished for, sometimes he looked out the window at the boys playing soccer on the field and then back in his room where there were dresses and skirts and makeup all lined up in his closet and on his table for him, and dared to feel something like anger and hurt.

He never hates his mom, though, and he thinks he has it better than others, because Karma never quite has anything to say when it’s his turn to tell the class about what he did during his weekend, and Kayano often spoke about her sister like she wished neither of them would go back to the house they lived in.

Nagisa loves his mom, but he doesn’t think he can quite abide by his five year old’s self wish and stay with Mom forever and ever and ever, because he likes staying outside for as long as he possibly could before she called him and asked him to come home. 

“I wished for my mom to be happy with who I am,” Nagisa says, and his heart swells when he means it. There’s a tingling in the fingers that encircle his soul gem (and that’s how Nagisa realizes why it’s called a soul gem) that spreads up his arm and all the way to fill his chest. “I wished she would accept me for me.” 

Kayano gives him a smile, ever so blinding, and her voice sounds like twinkling bells and fairy lights. “I wished for my sister’s happiness.”

“Now I feel like a little bit of a twat,” Karma sounds a little sheepish. “I wished to come in first place for everything.”

“We all have our passions!” Kayano laughs. “Oh, Nagisa, you look amazing!”

“I feel amazing,” Nagisa says. “I feel like me!” Nothing has ever felt more real to Nagisa than it did at that moment!

Suddenly they’re caught up in a whirlwind. Kayano has guns - muskets, that pack a powerful punch. They’re slow to reload, not worth the effort, really, and Kayano effortlessly sidesteps that problem by simply… making more. Practical. The discarded muskets vanish into thin air, no longer needed, leaving behind a faint twinkle. 

“It’s base instinct!” She’s yelling at them, jumping around - like a dancing arcade booth, Nagisa thinks hysterically. “I can’t tell you what to do!”

They’ve had a bit of practice, by which practice meant Kayano kicked the shit out of them. 

They’re in a labyrinth now. “Nothing better than hands-on experience,” Kayano says, a blown-out grin on her face, and Karma - who ever introduced them? - feral as ever, agreed. Nagisa’s caught in the crossfire between their insane ideas and he leaps out of the way of the… disembodied shapes that are darting between his legs to try and trip him. They are the Witch's minions, this time round - this particular Witch seems to have a preference for geometry. 

Karma seems to be getting a hang of it. He’s pulling daggers out of midair and tossing them at reckless abandon. Some of his weapons graze the shapes, some others impale them directly and makes them disappear in a puff of smoke. A large number of throwing knives, however, miss their mark entirely - and considering they’re battling in close quarters, it’s not a good thing. Nagisa had to duck to avoid three knives already, and judging by Kaayano’s “KARMA! AIM!” she’s not too happy about it either. 

All Nagisa can describe is a mess of everything, it’s certainly a labyrinth of the senses. 

Picture this: an optical illusion. Any optical illusion would do. The first one that comes to your mind. Yes? Good. 

Now picture ten more of these optical illusions. Now imagine that an insane artist - Karma, but a tad more unhinged - had an arsenal of interior decorating supplies that allowed them to design a room in any way they wanted. And for some inexplicable reason, they decided to make every single thing in the room - the walls, floors, ceiling, furniture, everything - an optical illusion. 

Half the floor could be Moire’s pinwheels, spinning and not spinning. The other half could be, say, a color blindness test. Was Nagisa colorblind? He didn’t think so, but now he thinks he’ll go get his eyes checked anyways. 

A set of stairs, and give them stripes that run parallel to the stairways, but offset them so none of the striped lines lay directly on the edge of a stair. A wall with the goddamn Is-this-a-rabbit?Is-this-a-duck? print on it. Whatever. Go wild! In the background, play a recording of a song you have stuck in your head but could never remember the name of, on a scratchy record player that skips the beat every 16 seconds.

All of this, overlaid on top of an actual labyrinth that required physical navigation and the soul gem GPS system - yes, hence the real name - so that Nagisa could get to the very centre chamber and find the Witch, to finally kill it and end it’s assault on his senses.

That embodies exactly what a witch’s labyrinth looks like. 

Where is he?

Right, a witch’s labyrinth.

“KARMA! AIM!” Kayano shrieks, and behind her Karma laughs loud, and yells back, “SORRY!” 

How does it come so easy to both of them? 

He jumps out of the way of yet several more… things. From the belt around his waist he reaches into a pouch and pulls out a grenade. It looks and feels like the ones they’ve tried out during their training session, so Nagisa pulls the pin and throws.

It detonates, sending little shapes flying and screeching into the air.

“Yeah! Nagisa!” Karma cheers, punching the air.

The pouch is small enough to hold only one grenade, but when Nagisa brings his hand down, another one is already there. 

“I’ve weakened the Witch plenty,” Kayano says, hopping back. “You two go at it.” She has two muskets in her hands, which she raises and fires in quick succession. The Witch in question is bound up with Kayano’s bright green ribbons. It looks like… a large worm in optical illusion print. Its shrieking sounds like nails on a chalkboard and it's trying to shake the ribbons off. 

Karma whips two daggers out of thin air and throws them. They hit their mark, but seem to be as efficient as a BB gun grazing the hide of an elephant - ergo, not at all. The Witch towers above them, possibly ten stories high, still shrieking, and Karma stares sadly down at palm sized throwing weapons. 

Kayano looks at him, eyebrow raised. “Try something bigger.”

“Bigger,” Karma furrows his brow, patting his uniform down. 

Nagisa pulls the grenade out.

“Bigger,” Kayano repeats, looking exasperated.

“How?” Nagisa says. 

“I dunno, it’s magic,” Kayano shrugs. “It’s all in your head. Think of something bigger.”

“Holy shit!” Karma exclaims then, and from nowhere he draws a longsword. It’s a normal sized sword that doesn’t look like it would do much more against the worm-Witch, but given that all he has managed so far are small daggers, this seems impressive.

Karma throws the sword.

“You’re an idiot,” Kayano tells him.

“I’m not much of a sword person anyways,” Karma says, shrugging. He walks over to pick the longsword up from where it clattered to the ground five feet away.

“Come on, Nagisa.” Kayano says. “Bigger!”

“Bigger…” Nagisa thinks hard. It’s all in his head. He just needs to think...

...and from the same tiny grenade pouch, he pulls out a machine gun.

“Nagisa!” Kayano says, delighted. 

It’s surprisingly light, for how much it dwarfs Nagisa in size. Grenades and daggers were easy to use comparatively to a gun, but instinct seems to take over Nagisa then, like he’s done this a million times before. He hoists it on his shoulder, looks through the scope,

the Witch shrieks again, shrill, sharp, echoing,

and Nagisa pulls the trigger.

“Well, this is Nagisa’s kill,” Kayano says, dropping the grief seed into his palm. 

“I’ll get the next one,” Karma says, hands behind his head. 

Nagisa taps it to his soul gem, watching the grief seed sap the darkness from the stone. He feels oddly invigorated after that, but it could be the adrenaline rush.

“It’s pretty much useless after this,” Kayano says, nodding to the seed. 

“I kinda want to keep it,” Nagisa says.

Karma beams at him. “LIke battle spoils.”

Kayano rolls her eyes at them, and teases about their sentimentality.

The effects of Nagisa’s wish slowly trickle in a bit after that. 

His mother used to run her fingers through his hair, saying how it was softer than hers ever been. She’s always wanted a little girl, and she’d been disappointed when Nagisa came out a boy, but she always wanted her way. He wanted to be who he was, and he wanted to love his mom and for her to love him back, without pulling his hair into pigtails or buying him lipstick and telling him he would be so pretty, what a shame it was against school dress code, what a shame. 

So when the opportunity lands on his lap, he wishes his mom would be happy with who he is, that she would accept him for him. 

And when he gets back home one day, there’s a lipstick on the table that his mom made the purchase for two odd weeks ago. He’s almost terrified, for the briefest moment, when he holds the tube in his hands, like nothing he saw was real.

But then he remembers very distinctly clocking a giant floating trapezium in its third row of teeth with the wrong end of a machine gun about three hours ago.

“Mom!” He calls out, padding into the kitchen, where she’s humming over a pot of soup. 

“Yes dear?”

“I don’t want to wear this lipstick anymore.”

His mom freezes and for a split second, terror grips Nagisa’s heart like a vice. But then she looks over her shoulder and smiles at him, ever so softly and says, “sure, my baby. Whatever you want.”

The grin on Nagisa’s face couldn’t be wider, and he chucks the tube out in the trash.

“I can’t believe it fucking worked,” Karma slams onto his table one day. A box of strawberry milk is crushed in one fist, a piece of paper in another.

Nagisa blinks up at him. “What?”

Karma slides the paper under Nagisa’s nose. It’s their test from earlier, that Nagisa scraped a 76 on. Karma has a 98 - no surprise there. “Um, congratulations?”

“No,” Karma hisses, “shh.” He tilts his head back a little, lips pursed, and Nagisa follows the inflection to see…

It’s Asano, one of their classmates. “-substituted a formula wrong,” Asano is saying, “damn. I lost 3 marks.” 

Asano is who can be described as Karma’s academic rival. What Karma has in natural intellect Asano makes up with hard work - there’s a different textbook a grade or two higher on his table every day, and it shows off in his results. He has close to perfect scores for everything, and he’s often the only student beating Karma out for first…

...place... 

The lipstick in the trash flashes through Nagisa’s mind. He stands up so quickly his chair screeches back, which earns a few odd looks. “Oh my god!”

Karma’s wish was to come in first place for everything. Hey, Nagisa doesn’t judge! That’s a good and practical wish to ensure future success, and that would probably be on the running for Nagisa’s second wish (if he could make one). But that’s not the point.

“It actually worked,” Karma hisses, a little scared and a little awed. “What the fuck!”

“I know!” Nagisa says, grinning. 

Then an eraser flicks him on the forehead. They turn to Kayano a few seats away. She has surprisingly impeccable aim, and she’s rolling her eyes at them good naturedly. 

“There’s a lot of reasons she’s staying in her relationship,” she says, shrugging. When Kayano Kaede first met her sister’s fiance, she immediately hated him. No matter how many people said he was a perfectly fine upstart, or a nice young man, or an intelligent capable breadwinner. Turns out she was right to hate him, too, because he has a foul mouth and a mean hand and he made Aguri absolutely miserable.

“We’re in a… crunch,” Kayano says. “My parents essentially sold her out as a mail order bride. Breaking up would land us in a whole lot more trouble.” She pauses. “It’s not something just money can fix, I thought about it. I will, eventually - when I graduate. I’ll get a good job and everything. But before that, while we’re still stuck here… I want her to be happy, you know?”

“It works, though?” Karma says. 

“It does,” she beams at them. “The magic is surprisingly practical, I think. It regulates her moods. It’s not like she doesn’t still feel sad or frustrated sometimes, but she seems to have a better handle on coping it, you know? And the fiance is nicer to her. It’s probably not the intended effect of the magic but it probably helps the situation. I don’t know what weird logic goes on but honestly, if it removes the stick out of his ass, I’d take it.”

That night, when Nagisa asks, Mom agrees to bring him to cut his hair on the weekend. She’s smiling at him like she always did and Nagisa’s never felt happier.

“Loving the new look,” Kayano says, as they stand shoulder to shoulder by the classroom to stare at their reflection in the window. “Although without your hair on your head, you look shorter than me now.” 

Nagisa elbows her. “Remember,” he parrots, “everything, like height, and hair, is just an illusion.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Kayano says.. 

_Nagisa!_

“You know,” Karma tells Nagisa, when they’re both sitting at the edge of a rooftop, legs dangling over the parapet. “I got a call the other day.”

“Oh?” Nagisa says.

“Have I told you about my parents?” Karma says. He looks out towards the city horizon. “I don’t think I’ve talked about them.”

Karma never quite has anything to say when it’s his turn to tell the class about what he did during his weekend. Nagisa once saw him sign his own forms even when they were not supposed to, and he never had anyone come to their parent-teacher meetups. He always smiles with a smile that never reaches his eyes when he talks about them, which is not often, and always shrugs when someone asks when they are coming back. 

“They’re successful businessmen that travel all the time,” Nagisa says.

“Yes,” Karma says. He leans forward, putting his hands on his knees. “My wish was kind of selfish, especially since yours and Kayano’s had seemed so much more… noble, to wish for happiness and well-being. I wished to be first place in exams. It’s silly, isn’t it?.”

“It’s not,” Nagisa says. “We all have different goals and passions. What something means to you may not make sense to others.”

“Guess so,” Karma says. He looks up. “The call I got. It’s from my parents.”

“Oh!”

“I got the best all the time when I was younger, you know?” Karma says. “I came in first for pretty much everything. I think they were disappointed when I started falling short of that, and at first they tried to encourage me. But I think I got second place one too many times and they gave up.”

Nagisa doesn’t know what to say. “Those are high standards,” he settles on saying.

“Maybe, but expectations are subjective,” Karma shrugs. He props a leg up. “I texted them about my grades. They gave me a call back. They said they were happy that I was doing well again.”

“That’s nice,” Nagisa says. “Isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Karma says, smiling a little. “I don’t know why I thought of some roundabout way like improving my grades, to, you know…”

Get his parents to notice him. Yeah, Nagisa’s wish had been a little more direct. “It’s smart,” Nagisa laughs. “You also get the perk of coming in first.”

“Yeah,” Karma says. “And I felt… odd, if I had use magic for their approval, you know? I wanted them to look at me because of my achievements and who I was, not because some spell told them to…” he looks at Nagisa, wincing a little. “That was not a jab at you. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Nagisa smiles. “I’m just happy we both got what we wanted.”

“Why are Witches called Witches anyways?” Karma asks, absently flipping a dagger in his hands. “Maybe my preconceived notions of what a Witch is meant to be - you know, I’ve read Harry Potter - is warping my perception of the actual witches.”

“There’s really no word in your language to accurately categorize the phenomenon,” Korosenai tells them. “The word Witch is the closest possible approximation.”

“Describe it, then,” Karma says.

“We can make up a word,” Kayano agrees.

“Well…” Korosenai thinks. Nagisa leans a little forward. “What do you guys see?”

“Optical illusions,” Nagisa says immediately.

“A mosaic,” Karma says.

“Chaos incarnate,” Kayano says.

“It is…” Korosenai ponders, “being ripped apart and put back together, in all the wrong places. A storybook torn up and stuck together all out of order.”

“A storybook?” Nagisa says. Something sounds almost familiar to him. 

“A storybook,” Korosenai agrees. “It’s not real.”

“Asano’s been acting a little weird, isn’t he?” Nagisa says.

“Is he?” Karma frowns. “He said something to me the other day, told me to watch my back. I thought that meant he was going to work harder to come in first place, or something.”

“Is that possible?” Nagisa asks.

“I don’t know,” Karma says. “I don’t think so, not with the magic’s intervention? Maybe a tie is possible, because technically the ranking will still have me be listed as first.”

There’s something ringing in Nagisa’s ear. “Have you seen Kayano around?”

Karma whips around to stare at him with wide eyes, like he’d never expected the question. “Kayano?”

“Yeah,” Nagisa says. “You okay?”

“No, I just…” Karma looks away, deep in thought. “It’s funny, isn’t it? People always talk about us and Kayano as _Karma and Nagisa and Kayano_ , as if we’re always attached at the hip. It’s just kinda odd to hear us three not together.”

“I guess you’re right,” Nagisa says, not quite too sure why Karma’s bringing it up now.

“I bet she’s just busy,” Karma says. “Maybe she’s at the cafeteria.”

Nagisa stares at him, brows furrowed. “She didn’t even come to school today.”

“Didn’t she?” Karma sounds distracted. But he turns around and drops the subject, as if Nagisa’s never asked that question in the first place.

Oddly enough, Nagisa has the distinct feeling of having done this before. Deja Vu, or something. He's never been on a Witch Hunt without Kayano yet, but standing with Karma by his side, it almost feels like muscle memory to fight with one partner instead of two. 

"I kinda miss Kayano," Nagisa says. "It's easier to clear all these tiny mobs with an extra pair of hands." 

"Yeah," Karma says, and he sounds a little odd, but he's too far away for Nagisa to see his face. 

They make quick work of the Witch, and then the labyrinth is fading away underneath their feet. 

"Ever think about how these Witches are formed?" Karma says. 

"Magic?" Nagisa says. 

"Yes," Karma says sharply. Blinks. "Yeah," gentler. "There should be… a research study on this."

"I doubt people will believe us," Nagisa says. 

"Why don't they?" Karma says abruptly. "Why is this magic so obscure? How many magical kids do you think there are in the world, how is all this being kept under wraps?" 

Nagisa thinks. "Well, adults normally won't pay much of a mind to children talking about magic-" 

And he drops his weapon because Karma is in front of him, gripping onto his shoulders so tight his nails are digging through the fabric. "Nagisa, listen to me," he says a little insistently. "It's wrong. It's wrong! How long has this been going on? This magical business has been going on for a while, right? Whoever who were once magical kids should have already grown up."

"I mean, yeah," Nagisa blinks at him. "It's not something that can be explained by science, still. It's Magic." 

"Magic is just science we don't understand," Karma snaps. He turns around, and the conversation is over. 

Nagisa doesn’t really remember what they were talking about. This is his first time fighting solo with Karma but it seems like a conversation they’ve already had.

“You know,” Karma tells Nagisa once, when they’re both sitting at the edge of a rooftop, legs dangling over the parapet. 

“What?” Nagisa prompts him.

Karma looks at him funny. “What?”

“Oh, I thought you were going to say something.” Nagisa feels a little silly.

“Nah,” Karma says. He leans back. “Just enjoying the view.”

Kayano leans against the parapet, her hair whipping in the wind. Behind her, the city is washed in white midday light. “I feel like I have the whole world in front of me.” If he puts his palm and fingers over his eyes, she can block out dozens of buildings. “You know, I’m glad you guys are with me.”

“Me too,” Nagisa says. “I feel amazing. I feel like me!”

So he cuts his hair and throws out his makeup and his mother didn’t make him wear skirts after that. She looks at Nagisa with something shining in her eyes and she smiled bright and said, “I love you.”

And for a moment, Nagisa’s wishes came true. 

"But remember," Kayano had said once, turning back to look at them with something akin to pity in her eyes. _They could have had so much time._ "Nothing you see is real."

(Nagisa always wondered what Kayano was thinking. She seemed to be the cheerful bubbly sort of girl, but when she thought no one was looking her smile dropped and she gazed out the window like she was wishing for something that would never come true.)

(And she was right, because wishes never came true.

Or they did, in the sort of way that made you wish you never wished for anything in the first place.)

Kayano had wished for her sister to be happy. 

Aguri was smiling when they found her, a serene look on her face, and you could almost have believed she was asleep. The fiance never laid a hand on her from where he’s crushed under the driver’s seat. He’d never walk again, they say, but neither would Aguri.

Kayano’s wish came true after all. Her sister was happy, and now she will be immortalized as she is, forever, smiling up on top of the mantle.

Aguri Yukimura dies on a tuesday in a car wreck. Kayano hears the news, and she does not come to school.

Karma and Nagisa run after her.

She slips in between the gaps of two pillars and vanishes from view. Karma and Nagisa quickly round the corner, but the space is empty and Kayano is nowhere to be found.

And then they’re in a labyrinth, and Karma and Nagisa finally find out how Witches are formed. 

“Witches are…” Korosenai says, “being ripped apart and put back together, in all the wrong places. A storybook torn up and stuck together all out of order.”

Every little bit of Kayano was sewn into the very fabric of the labyrinth, stretched and torn apart and put back together in all the wrong ways. Her laughs are shattered, echoing, stitched together with screams. Before Nagisa’s eyes he sees a car - but Kayano never knew what it looked like, this must be her imagination - crash over and over again, each iteration more terrible, more mangled than the last. 

“Do you feel that?” Karma sobs. The ground shakes. The walls tremble. Nagisa imagines shuddering breaths, choked sobs, shoulders heaving. 

The car crashes again. Above them, on the ceiling. A screeching tire. Broken glass from the windshield rain down on them.

She’s crying.

(“The cycle of the universe,” Korosenai tells them, “says that one of these days, the universe will be unable to sustain the energy it produced and collapse in itself. Before that happens, you come in.

The entropy of the universe can be cycled through magic. Once you magical children collect enough entropy - or grief, in the terms of corrupting your soul gem - you become Witches. That energy is released back into the world - and recollected, by another magical child. It’s a self-sustaining cycle that controls and accounts for all your energy waste.”

“Why wouldn’t you have told us?!” Karma screams. Nagisa wants to. He can’t find the words.

“Compensation comes in the form of a wish,” Korosenai says. “You save the universe, being a part of the cycle.”

So Kayano dies the same day, trapped in a labyrinth of her own grief. That is her story, ripped apart and put back together in all the wrong places. Shattered glass rains down over and over again, and then molds back together - a car windshield - and then bursts into brilliant light. 

Kayano’s cries are deafening. 

“Kayano!” Nagisa screams, screams as Karma holds onto him, crying. “That’s her, Karma, that’s her!”

“No,” Karma says, “it’s not anymore.” 

And he unsheathes a sword and swings it.

Karma and Nagisa both keep their first grief seeds, as a keepsake. Kayano rolls her eyes at them, and teases about their sentimentality.

They keep hers, too.

So Kayano doesn’t go home. 

And nobody says anything about it, when she doesn't come into class, as if there had never been a _Karma and Nagisa and Kayano_ , as if she’d never been their friend in the first place. 

“Kayano’s run away,” their teacher lies. Her sister had died yesterday, and Kayano must have been wrecked with grief, the poor girl, so she didn’t go home. They’re preparing the funeral arrangements for the sister now, her parents - a picture frame and a casket and flowers to bury her with. They’d sent Kayano messages and calls and she has yet to reply to any of them.

She won’t, is the thing. They won’t even find a body to bury her.

(The grief seed is on Nagisa’s nightstand. Karma had taken one look at it and screamed until his throat went hoarse, then he’d flung his soul gem as far as he could and dropped into a dead faint. 

Nagisa spent half an hour on his hands and knees to find it. He’s crying, crying, and Korosenai is there, offering condolences that mean nothing. Nagisa blew him up and he popped right back into existence. Unkillable. 

Karma jolts back up when he’s back with his soul gem, like he’s been pulled up from shore.

“That’s your soul,” Korosenai says. He’s smiling. The knife Karma throws drives point blank through his skull and his mouth never moves when he talks, and he’s still smiling. “Don’t lose it, now.”

“Fuck off,” Karma spat, his voice heavy and wet. Nagisa doesn’t say a word.)

The world keeps turning, night passes, and they don’t talk about Kayano Kaede. Who would believe them? Who would believe them?

Nagisa’s forgotten about their test. Karma looks like he has, too. 

It’s a hard one. Nagisa’s sure it would have been anyways, even if his hands weren’t shaking and ears weren’t ringing, even if his tears didn’t stain the page every few seconds. He looks up to see Karma wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, and the pencil snaps under his grip.

“Sh-shit,” Karma’s voice wobbles.

Their teacher looks up sharply, then back down. 

Kayano’s empty seat is in his view. There isn’t a test script on her desk, her bag isn’t there - it almost looks brand new. Almost like the world has forgotten and moved on without her, even though it has no damn right to-

“I killed her.”

“Karma…”

“I killed her,” Karma sobs, face buried in his hands. “I killed her, Nagisa. I killed her. I killed-”

“You did not,” Nagisa says, “you didn’t. You said it yourself. That wasn’t Kayano anymore.”

“I KILLED HER!”

“NO!”

The contents of Nagisa’s bag spill onto the floor. His papers, pencils, books. 

His soul gem. It’s darker than it looks. It wasn’t supposed to be this dark. “Looks just like a grief seed,” Nagisa says.

Karma’s gaze snaps up. His eyes are wet and his voice is sharp. “What?” 

“Once this goes black. That’s what’s going to happen to us, isn’t it?” Nagisa says. He holds out his soul gem, a dirty blue. 

“G-god dammit to hell.”

“It’s called a grief seed,” Nagisa says. “Hearing that news. It must have broken her heart.”

“Her wish came true,” Karma says. “Her wish came true anyways, and it was all for nothing.”

The gem is swirling in darkness - with grief. Karma digs his out of his pocket, and it looks even worse than Nagisa’s. 

“You didn’t kill her,” Nagisa says firmly, and Karma looks like he doesn’t believe him.

Pause.

“We have to go on a Witch Hunt.”

“Are you serious right now?”

“If we don’t,” Nagisa holds both their gems up together. “This grief is going to overtake us.”

“Are you serious right now?” Karma’s voice cracks. “At this time?! After we know that the Witches were once!-”

He doesn’t finish his sentence.

“I know,” Nagisa says quietly. “But if we don’t, we’d be Witches just like then. I don’t want to have to kill you, Karma, and we owe it to Kayano to stay alive.”

If this was what heartbreak sounded like, Nagisa never wanted to love. 

And now the screeches, the cries thrown around in the labyrinths - everything spinning in front of their eyes - is a life. A wish granted in the worst possible way. Shredded apart. Playing before their eyes. Their laughter, distorted into the walls, echoing, echoing.

The Witch at the heart of the labyrinth wails. The walls shake with it. 

They had once been human, and this being was born from their despair. How much heartbreak had they suffered, Nagisa thinks, what did they lose? How much have they all lost, for a wish they didn’t know the consequences of?

When Nagisa gets home that day, his soul gem is shining bright and blue and for a moment all he wants to do is take a hammer to it. One of his grenades. Let it be destroyed by something forged by it’s very own magic.

And then his phone rings. It’s Karma.

Nagisa finds Karma hunched over in a seat in the hospital ER waiting room. He'd almost dropped his phone and ran over when Karma told him where he was, but Karma said that he was fine. 

He doesn't seem fine. 

"What happened?" Nagisa sits down next to him. 

Karma's hands are trembling. When he looks up Nagisa notices his eyes are red, which he rubs at with the back of his sleeve. Then he clutches one of Nagsia's hands and Nagisa rubs his thumb comfortingly over Karma's palm. 

"Remember that test we had a while back?" Karma mumbles. "The day after…" 

"Yeah," Nagisa says. 

"How much did you score for it?" 

"I failed," Nagisa says. He's not surprised he did. He wasn’t in the state of mind for it. Why were they talking about this?

"I got an 81," Karma says. 

Karma's never gotten below a 90 in the time Nagisa has known him. "Oh… that's…" Nagisa grips his hand harder. "That's okay, right? It was a hard test, and Sensei said that nobody scores high, not even-" 

And then Karma lurches forward and places his head on Nagsia's shoulder. Nagisa feels the heat of Karma's tears at his neck and he brings an arm up to put around Karma's shoulders. 

"Asano got 80."

Nagisa doesn't know what to say to that. 

"Asano got an 80, and his father beat him half to death."

"What?!" 

"I brought Asano here," Karma sobs. "H-He lives down the street from me, I ran into him on the way home. His arm was broken, Nagisa, his face had so much blood-" 

Karma explodes. "-and it's because of me! If I hadn't made this stupid wish then Asano could have gotten top and this wouldn’t have happened and-”

“It’s not your fault,” Nagisa tries, but it comes out weak.

“-and if none of this magical shit happened in the first place then Kayano would still be alive!”

It’s a quarter to eleven.

“What’s wrong?” Karma asks, an arm around Nagisa’s shoulder.

“It’s…” Nagisa has his phone out on his lap and he’s frowning at it. “My mom hasn’t called me yet.”

“She used to call you to keep tabs on you after school,” Karma says. 

“Yeah…”

“Nagisa,” Karma says, his eyes growing wide. “Your wish. You made it about… your mother… is she-”

Karma stands up quickly when his name is called, cutting their conversation short. Nagisa takes in a shuddering breath. He pockets his phone and follows after Karma, who speaks to a receptionist and then herds Asano out from a room.

And Asano looks terrible. One of his arms is in a sling and he has a bandage wrapped around his head. 

“Hey,” Karma says, in a soft voice.

Asano looks up at the both of them, biting his lip. He doesn’t look surprised to see Nagisa. He looks tired. “...can you help me get home?”

Karma looks conflicted. “No.”

Nagisa frowns. “What do you mean no?”

“I can’t bring him home!” Karma hisses at Nagisa, and he pulls Nagisa further away from the onlookers. “Not after-”

“What are you going to do?” Nagisa says. “You can’t kidnap him.”

Karma stays silently stubborn.

“...” Nagisa looks over to where Asano is awkwardly standing, having trailed after them. He looks confused.

“Asano,” Nagisa calls to him. “You okay?”

“...yeah.”

He was not. He sounded off. “What’s one plus one?”

If they hadn’t suspected anything wrong about Asano up until that point, the full blown panic on his face then was a telling sign. His good hand flies up to pull at his hair, his face twists. Immediately Karma is there, hands flapping wildly, not quite sure what to do, and Nagisa feels something heavy in the pit of his stomach.

He looks down at his phone again.

Karma’s voice is small, defeated. “You’re right,” he says. “Let’s just take him back.”

Nagisa reaches home past midnight, and he sees his mother humming to herself as she bustles about in the living room.

She should be asleep. No, she should have been ringing and ringing his phone until he picked up. She should be pissed off right now, threatening to lock Nagisa up. To take his phone away until he can be accountable. To yell about homeschooling him so he doesn’t have a reason to leave the house. 

Nagisa takes a slow step over the threshold. “Mom?”

His mother looks up, a pleasant, shallow smile on her face. “Yes, dear?”

She should not be smiling. She should not be alright with this. She should be hitting him over the head. Calling him ungrateful, disobedient.

Nagisa wished for her to be accepting of his decisions, and he had meant it in the context of acceptance around his gender identity, but he hadn’t really phrased it that way, had he? He’d simply gone with, in the midst of his excitement, a blanket statement. 

Did it now mean she was artificially accepting of all his decisions? The choice he made to stay out this late at night? What would she be accepting if he broke the vase or ripped up his shirt or if he simply didn’t come home today?

“Dear,” his mother says, “what’s wrong?”

Nagisa’s hands tremble. “Mom? What do you think of me?”

“Well,” his mother says, in the same tone of voice she did to inquire about his schoolwork or as she wondered aloud what she would buy from the supermarket for dinner. “I love you and accept you for who you are.”

Nagisa’s never felt colder.

“W-who am I?” 

His mother falters a bit at that, staring at Nagisa like she’s not quite looking past him. And then she straightens up and goes back to folding the laundry, humming to herself like Nagisa had never asked that question in the first place.

“That’s not my mother.” That was a caricature of her, a woman who wore her face but not her personality. 

His mother who Nagisa loved was high strung, possessive, controlling… She made him text her on his whereabouts whenever he went out and checked his homework to ensure it was in order. She liked it better when he wore his hair down, and she’d accepted it when he tied it up. The mother he knew would never have left him cut it, and she would never have let him throw a practically new tube of lipstick away. 

Now she turned a blind eye to everything Nagisa did. This was not what acceptance was.

“We’ve been losing quite a bit of students this semester,” their teacher says, a forced smile on their face. Both Asano and Kayano’s seats were empty.

“Asano is fine!” They say. “He’s just not doing very well, now, and his parents have decided to pull him out for a bit. Not to worry, he’s safe and sound!”

Nagisa sees Karma clench his fist under the table.

“I talked to him a bit,” Karma says, hands in his pockets. “He got a really bad migraine during that test. He couldn’t complete the paper.”

“Oh,” Nagisa says, nervousness in his belly. Was that the magic at work? How did it affect his mother? Surely she didn’t get migraines too, did she?

“No one else came close to matching our scores in that test, anyways,” Karma says. “So it didn’t affect anyone else. And it’s not just that time - although I did so terribly for the test that the magic had to compensate and just went awfully for Asano. The other tests where he fell a few marks short… he gets headaches so he loses concentration. Or just gets distracted unnecessarily by nothing in particular. Or that one time he had to go to the bathroom so badly he just skipped the last question entirely.”

“My mother…” Nagisa hesitates. “It’s like she’s not there anymore. I don’t recognize her. She used to be the opposite of accepting and I wished her to be so and it worked, but now it’s as if she’s an entirely different person.” 

They stand in silence for a long while.

Nagisa moves out.

Karma’s house is large and empty and he lives in it by himself. When Nagisa goes back to his house for the last time his mother smiles at him, and Nagisa suddenly realizes that he cannot live in a house with a stranger. It reminds him too much of Kayano, and the car crash he’d watched over and over again, failed wishes and terrible magic and even worse consequences. So he packs up and leaves and the woman who wears his mother’s face watches him, and not once does she make a move to stop him.

“What do you think Aguri felt?” Karma blurts. They’re on a rooftop, overlooking the city, but there’s a haze over the buildings today. The world seems fuzzy and far away. “Kayano wished for her to be happy. What do you think she felt, then? Do you think she was really happy?”

“I wish she was,” Nagisa says. “At the very least, I wanted Kayano’s wish to have really come true. And if it did, that means that my mother is somewhere in there, and that she’s genuinely accepting of me, instead of it being… fake.”

They’re both seated, legs dangling over the parapet.

“You know,” Karma says. “I don’t think I want my parents to come home.”

There are warnings that nobody reads about in between the pages of these stories. Fairies try in vain to reverse a curse and their fair lady falls asleep for a hundred years. The genie grants the boy three wishes, which he squanders on monetary possessions. Magic comes wrought with consequences, is what Nagisa eventually learns. “But what will I do,” he asks his mother, “when I have to make my three wishes?”

His mother smiles at him.

“Well, sweetie. What would you wish for?”

“I wished you would accept me for me!”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“What do you mean?!” Karma says, slamming his hands onto the table, an inch away from Korosenai’s unblinking face. “Kayano is gone! I hurt one of my classmates, you practically brainwashed Nagisa’s mother!”

“The consequences of your wish,” Korosenai says, “are entirely yours to bear.”

“Thats!-”

“The wishes were granted, were they not?” 

“Listen,” Nagisa says. “I know we cannot undo the wish, but is there any way to reverse any of its effects, just a little bit?”

“I’m afraid not. The magic that grants your wish is irreversible. It would be inaccurate to say I granted your wishes, because I am simply a channel by which the magic flows… as you both are now, too, with your soul gems.”

“The soul gems,” Karma says abruptly. “They become grief seeds, when the person becomes too distraught with grief. Like Kayano. Does that mean all the Witches we fought were once… like us?”

“Yes.”

Karma looks as sick as Nagisa feels. 

“So if… if we don’t cleanse our gems of the grief, it’s likely that we too would… become Witches?”

“Yes.”

“The cycle of the universe,” Korosenai tells them, “says that one of these days, the universe will be unable to sustain the energy it produced and collapse in itself. 

The entropy of the universe, however, can be cycled through magic. Once you magical children collect enough entropy - or grief, in the terms of corrupting your soul gem - you become Witches. That energy is released back into the world - and recollected, by another magical child. It’s a self-sustaining cycle that controls and accounts for all your energy waste.”

“Why us?” Karma says, voice cracking. “Why us?”

“It’s nothing personal, I assure you,” Korosenai says. “According to calculations, you human beings are simply ideal because of your incredible aptitude with emotional responses. And the magical cycle relies on that, you see, it runs on the negative emotions you feel. 

I come from a race - I believe your kind would call us aliens - and we do not feel emotions of the sort.”

It wriggles its tentacles in the air, and Karma swiftly kicks it.

“Is there any way out of the cycle?” Nagisa says. “Where we can give up our powers and our soul gems? The wishes don’t have to be erased!” (At that, Karma gives Nagisa a sharp look, but he doesn’t rebuke it.)

Korosenai shakes its head. “No.”

If this was a cycle… being a Witch was inevitable, was it? They could keep it at bay with the grief seeds… but what if they fall short? Fail to find a witch in time? Become so caught up in their grief?

If anything, they owed it to Kayano and Asano and Nagisa’s mother to keep fighting. If not, then would it have been worth it at all?

They fight. They take down Witches, they cleanse their soul gems, and now they keep their grief seeds, all laid out on the countertop because these are not accessories or toys or useless, these were people’s lives. They go to school, and Karma redoubles his efforts in studying, to ensure that he stays at the top so the effects of his wish do not affect anyone else. Nagisa stays away from home, away from his mother, and prays that she’ll remember who she is, and remember who he is.

And then one day, Nagisa’s phone rings.

Nagisa almost gets run over twice in his haste to get home. He forgoes the elevator and sprints-

“-NAGISA SHIOTA! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU-”

-he skips up the stairs two, three at a time-

“-CLOTHES GONE FROM YOUR DRAWER-”

-his ears are ringing, he’s beaming-

“-ALL THE MAKEUP DISAPPEARED-”

-he kicks off his shoes in haste-

“-THERE BETTER BE A GOOD EXPLANATION FOR EVERYTHING-”

-there are tears springing in his eyes before he even steps over the threshold, and when he throws the door open his mother is there.

Not the terrible puppet of his mother, but the real one, and Nagisa can tell because she looks furious.

“NAGISA SHIOTA- oof!”

“Mom!” Nagisa sobs, throwing himself immediately into her arms. “Mom!”

“Nagisa!” She sounds startled. A reasonable reaction. Anything that’s not apathetic acknowledgement sounds like music to Nagisa’s ears! Is this real? Is she real?

“What is up with you?” His mother’s shrill voice sounds. “Oh, god! Nagisa, what did you do to your hair?!”

Grinning, Nagisa lifts his head from her chest to look into her eyes. “I cut it!”

The fury in her expression is the greatest thing Nagisa has seen!

“I threw away the makeup! I got rid of all my skirts!” Nagisa wipes his tears with the back of his hand, and hugs her tighter. “Mom! I missed you!”

Nagisa’s mother opens her mouth. “I!-” But then she stops short and jolts, blinks into the distance like she’d forgotten what she was about to say, and when she next looks at Nagisa the previous anger in her eyes has clouded over, and Nagisa knows.

“Oh sweetie,” his mother says, in a voice that’s not hers. “I’ll accept you for whatever you want to do.”

Does Nagisa know what to do?

“Karma!”

Karma startles. He’s in the middle of a textbook, making messy annotations in the margins. “Oh, Nagisa,” he says. “Is it time for dinner? Let me finish this chapter and we can get started-”

“No!” Nagisa says. He vaults over the couch and plants himself in front of Karma, grinning. “I have great news! I went to see my mother today!”

“What?” Nagisa!” Karma quickly sets his work aside. “Are you okay? What happened?!”

“She remembered me! My mom!” Nagisa says. “For a moment, she did! I got a call from her after school and she was yelling at me, when I went back she was exactly like how she used to be! Asked me why I cut my hair and everything!”

“Holy shit!” Karma jumps to his feet. “Nagisa, that’s great! The magic wore off-”

“It didn’t,” Nagisa says, shaking his head. “Not entirely, at least. She went back to the bad acceptance.”

Karma stills, and frowns. “But you said it wore off. For a small moment, at least?”

“Yeah,” Nagisa says.

“Do you think…” Karma’s voice trails off, and he looks out the window. And then he’s out the door.

“Hey!” Nagisa goes after him. He sees Karma sprinting down the street - barefoot, that idiot - so he picks up a pair of slippers and goes after him. Karma’s a few blocks down, banging at the door of someone’s house. Nagisa spies the nameplate by the gate. Ah.

Asano opens the door. It’s odd to see him out of school uniform, and his arm is in a soft cast. “Oh,” he says, “Hi.”

Nagisa offers a wave, and Karma immediately goes off. “How are you? How’s your head? Have you been doing homework?”

Asano blinks, but he doesn’t seem surprised. Nagisa knows Karma’s been regularly checking up on him, reasons stemming from the guilt Karma feels. 

“I’m fine,” Asano says. “I haven’t gotten an episode in a while now and yes, I’ve been doing my homework.”

“Quick, Asano,” Karma says, and rattles off a quick math question.

Asano thinks for a beat, and answers it. He must have gotten it right, because Karma grins. “I’m fine, really.” 

“So did it just go away? Did you do anything? When was your last episode?”

“Um…” Asano thinks. “It might have been a multitude of influences. They got me started on medication, and my commitments have decreased exponentially, so they think it might have been school stress…” he bites his lip, and looks away. 

Karma seems to be deep in thought. An awkward silence lapses between them. “Um,” Nagisa says. “How’s the arm?”

“It’s… fine,” Asano says.

“Glad you’re doing better,” Nagisa says sincerely.

“Thanks,” Asano says. 

Karma’s head snaps up. “Nagisa! I thought of something! Let’s go!” He whirls around and starts back to his house, still barefoot. Nagisa looks down at the slippers he’d brought for no reason, then up at Asano, who looks bemused.

“See you, Shiota.”

“What did you think of?”

“Well, see here,” Karma says, gesticulating wildly. “It might be a coincidence but it might not, hear me out. The magic isn’t permanent.”

Nagisa frowns. “Korosenai said it was irreversible.”

“Irreversible, yes, but not permanent.” Karma sits back on his haunches. “See, it wore off for your mother, just a little bit enough for her to regain herself and call you. And Asano can do math and actual academic work now, even though the magic messed his brain up a little-”

“Isn’t that because he’s not competing against you know?” Nagisa points out. “Your wish affects people who go up against you. He’s homeschooled now, so he’s not at risk of taking your first place from you.”

“That’s it!” Karma snaps his fingers. “See! That’s what I meant about it not being permanent. The magic doesn’t need to affect him any more, and it didn’t do any lasting damage…” Karma winces. “Well, it did, but not in the magical sense…” 

Karma leans forward, hands gripping Nagisa’s shoulders. “Same thing with your mother! You’ve been crashing here for a while now. Your wish is for her to accept you, but because you weren’t physically around her, there was no need for the magic to warp her perception of you. She managed to regain a sense of who you really were, before the magic kicked in again.”

“That’s…” Nagisa looks down at his hands. “Is… that true?”

“That’s an interesting observation,” Korosenai muses, his tentacles waving. 

“Am I right or not?” Karma demands, hands balled into fists.

“Yes,” Korosenai says. “Magic is not some infinite resource, of course, we don’t use it all callously. If the current situation in question is not affecting your wish, the magic would not interfere with it. Such as with your friend, whom no longer stands between you and your first place.”

“What about my mom?” Nagisa asks. 

“Well, as you both have hypothesized,” Korosenai says. “Your wish is for her to accept you, but because you are so far from who she wishes to accept (Nagisa winces, and Karma puts an arm around him) the magic works hard to influence her. Your temporary absence means… well, what was it that you humans say? Out of sight, out of mind? You weren’t around to induce the effect, so the magic worked less and less, until she got a brief moment of clarity.”

“So you’re saying,” Nagisa says, “it’s possible to stop the effects of the magic.”

“It’s irreversible.”

“Well, we can’t undo what has already been done, right? But...” Nagisa looks at Karma. “The magic doesn’t work on anyone else in class apart from when it did on Asano because no one else would have come close anyways. So the magic shouldn't affect my mother as long as I’m who she innately wants to accept.”

“Nagisa!” Karma yells. “You can’t be saying what I think you’re saying.”

Nagisa bites his lip.

“Oh,” Karma says. He scowls at Korosenai. “Scram, this is a private conversation.”

Korosenai laughs, and disappears with a pop.

Karma turns back to Nagisa. “You can’t be serious. You’re going to change back to… who you were before? Just to appease your mother?”

Nagisa frowns. “If it works.”

“That’s awful!” Karma shakes his head. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s not right.”

“Easy for you to say! You have an easy way out!” Nagisa presses his hand to his chest. "My own mother doesn't even recognize me!"

Karma looks conflicted. "...But what would you even do?"

"Grow my hair out. Wear lipstick."

"You'll hate it."

"Maybe," Nagisa says, frowning. He turns away to stare out past the rooftop to the faraway city below. They can't hear any ambient traffic or footsteps or people's lives passing by. It's like they're too displaced. Kayano’s not even here to be able to look down from the top of his building.

"No, there has to be another way." Karma stands up and puts his hands behind his head, and then walks to lean over the parapet. “Remember, your own mental state affects this too. If you’re feeling too much grief as a result of that, you’ll become a Witch, and it’d all be for nothing.”

“Oh, yeah,” Nagisa says, frowning. 

“We have to find a balance, then,” Karma decides. “You can’t stay away forever, because if she gets her bearings she might call the cops when you're not there. If you put enough time between sporadic visits home, you might be able to see her. You know, the real her… for a little bit.”

Nagisa walks to the edge of the building, and looks down. "Yeah."

Days go by.

Karma leans against Nagisa, staring aimlessly at the result slip in his hands. He hadn't scored full marks for everything but he'd gotten the top spot anyways. "I want to say I feel listless with this score that I attained aided by magic," Karma says. "But that'd be a lie. Now that Asano’s not here, magic or no magic, it'd have gotten the same score and made it top anyways."

Nagisa hums.

"Funny, isn't it?" Karma says. "Getting our wish granted is never as fulfilling as it made out to be."

"My mother once said wishes are what you make them to be. If you wish for something, it might not come true. Sometimes you still have to work for it."

"She's right." Karma shifts in his arms. "That's how everyone has to be. If they want something they have to work for it…" Karma fidgets with his fingers. "We are, too, in a way. Don't you think so?"

Nagisa thinks. "Fighting Witches," he supplies.

“Something like that,” Karma agrees. “We have magic to fulfil our wishes and yet we’re working towards making them come true with our own accord, anyways.” He leans back on his hands. “I think Kayano made her sister happy, wish or no.”

They fight Witches, obtain a substantial collection of grief seeds… there were so many of them, they could find one Witch every week - and they needed it, because their heavy hearts tinted their soul gems a dusty grey anyways even without the expenditure of magic. 

Was this how the world worked? How many children have disappeared without a trace, gone without a voice? Realized their hubris far too late and didn’t even get a chance to regret what they’ve done?

“Do you ever think any of them thought it was worth it?”

The brief ignorance, the period of time they could live their dreams before the consequences came crashing down on them. 

What had Kayano felt? Had she thought it was worth it, to have guaranteed her sister a sense of happiness until her very last breath? Had she wished she had never made the wish in the first place? 

What did Nagisa think?

“Do you think there’s a way to bring my mother back?”

Karma’s gaze snaps to Nagisa. “We have to believe there’s a way, right?” But he sounds unsure.

Nagisa hesitates. “I…”

Karma shifts, so he’s fully facing him. “What’s wrong?”

“I went back to my mom’s yesterday,” Nagisa says. He tugs at his hair. “What do you think she sees when she looks at me?” 

Karma shrugs. “What do you think she sees?”

“Something she wants to see…” Nagisa looks to his right. “But does it make her see me as someone different, or does it change her mind on what she thinks she wants to accept?”

“I don’t know,” Karma says softly. 

“I would like to know,” Nagisa says. “She’s affected by something that’s my fault, and I don’t understand a single bit of it.”

Karma’s gaze drops to his lap. “Sometimes I wonder what Kayano felt. What being in a labyrinth is like.”

“Me too,” Nagisa says.

“Do you think they know what’s going on?” They look over to their array of grief seeds. “Do you think they felt it happen?”

“Kayano watched her sister die. Over and over and over again.”

“Do you think she knew we were there?”

“Your soul gem is darker than mine,” Karma says, reaching over to drop the grief seed into his hands. Nagisa turns it over, frowning, and taps it to his gem.

The dark fog seeps of his gem at the contact, and then it’s blue again.

“What do you think it was this time?” Nagisa says.

“I thought I saw a teddy bear in one of the illusion iterations,” Karma says. He buries his hands in his pockets. 

“I wonder if there’s an age requirement to these things,” Nagisa thinks, looking up. It’s late in the evening, and there are stars in the sky. “I mean, we have to be at an age where we can, well, fight and be active. But how young do you think that goes?”

He lifts a hand, and places it over his eyes. Now there’s a hand in his way of the view of the night sky. 

Seeing what he’s wanted to see, like his mother. Missing out everything else.

“The nature of the wishes would really change depending on the maturity,” Karma says.

“I wonder if there are any people that made it far. Do you think there are a couple of magical adults out there? Who got their wishes fulfilled in a good way and never suffered enough grief to know what’s on the other side?”

“Maybe,” Karma says. “But highly unlikely. The impact of life stressors also affects the level of grief, like us with Kayano. That didn’t directly impact our wishes. What if someone had a bad breakup? Lost their job, got into an accident? These types of things are pretty much inevitable and occur more often as you grow up, and you can’t protect your soul gem from that if you’re unaware it’s a concern in the first place.”

“What do you think it’s like?” Nagisa asks. “Becoming a Witch.”

“Well,” Karma says. “Your soul becomes a literal amalgamation of the grief you suffer, so I’d imagine it’s pretty unpleasant.”

Nagisa rolls his eyes. Unpleasant is right, he thinks. But when he lies awake at night with Karma a room away pretending he’s not tossing and turning, Nagisa remembers Kayano’s labyrinth. Aguri’s crash over and over and over again, the floors and walls shaking like she’s crying and crying and crying. And in that dream Nagisa runs and runs and runs up the stairs and down the corridor and round the corner, the source of her grief wrapped so tightly around Nagisa until he’s struggling to breathe.

She was lost in her own mind. She hadn't been there, she couldn’t even have known what the crash would have looked like.

They hadn’t used Kayano’s grief seed on either of their soul gems. It’s as untouched as it is the first day. 

Kayano was gone, but she wasn’t dead, was she? Not in the physical human sense, or at least Nagisa didn’t think so. This was something magical. Korosenai talked about magic as the energy of the universe, and Nagisa may not be a Karma in physics, but energy could not be destroyed or something like that, right? 

Nagisa stares up at the ceiling.

He wonders if Karma has thought about this already. He probably has, Karma’s brain runs a mile a minute, and he’d probably run through calculations and possibilities long before Nagisa’s even considered them… and he’d seemed sort of optimistic that they’ll figure a loophole around it.

Nagisa’s spinning in circles around this. 

Before Nagisa knows it he’s padding over to Karma’s room. He hears a soft “come in” after two knocks on the door. 

“Can’t sleep again?”

“Yeah.” Nagisa slides into bed next to Karma (it stopped being awkward after the first few times). “I was thinking.” 

Karma hums. 

“Do you think there’s a way back? From when you become a Witch.”

“If we apply the laws of the magic we know exist,” Karma mumbles. “Irreversible, but not permanent. In which case a Witch and their labyrinth are only temporary states of being. That we know, for certain, because they disappear when we defeat them. Presumably something happens, but we don’t know where it goes.”

Nagisa frowns. “What if we don’t find out where it goes?”

Karma is silent for a moment. “Then we don’t, I guess.”

Nagisa looks over at Karma, but Karma’s already turned to his side. 

As finals near, Karma throws himself further into his work. He would drink that little packet of banana milk he picked up from the vending machine at school. Sometimes they would find a nice cool corner and crack open their books and Karma would work his way through their homework packets with scary efficiency, and he would punctuate their silence with an observation in their environment like how a cat just ran past chasing something dark and fast or how a leaf was falling through the cracks of a drain to Nagisa’s right. 

“Hey,” Karma says suddenly. He’s looking over Nagisa’s shoulder.

“Huh? What?”

“Nagisa,” he says sharply, “You’re missing something.”

Nagisa squints down at his work. He’d been going in circles around this question for a bit.

“Something obvious,” Karma says again, voice stilted.

“Oh!” Nagisa’s switched a pair of variables around. “Thanks.”

_Nagisa!_

Nagisa grows up on magical wishes and skirts and pretty pink princesses. There’s a bit of a social conundrum there, because when he gets his first smartphone and keys his name into all the flashy apps, he reads about the complete opposite of his problem. “Let the boys wear dresses if they want to,” scream the bright bold captions, preaching about the flaws of traditional gender roles and conformity. He feels a little out of his depth.

He’s a bit of an odd one out in the narrative, it seems, but it flows just the same. “When did you find out you were a boy?” Well, he simply just did, is the only way he can think of to describe it - and he was a boy, in all physical aspects of the matter, despite how much his mother tried to turn a blind eye to it. She was high strung, possessive, controlling… but she was not neglectful, or at least Nagisa didn’t think so, in the way that he saw some other parents were. She made sure he got his meals and fed him medication when he was sick, and was fortunately in her head well enough to at least give medical professionals his biological gender for appropriate purposes. 

So Nagisa was a boy, but his mother had always wanted a daughter. She dressed him up in skirts and grew his hair long past his shoulders, dusted rouge on his cheeks and mascara on his lashes and told him that he was her pretty pretty girl. 

Nagisa never knew what to do with that, but he loves his mother. Maybe someone else looking in might say he shouldn't, that she was abusive. Maybe she was, but Nagisa needs her. She's his mother. Nagisa would make a million and one foolish wishes for her and all he wants is for her to come back and love him.

“Mom?”

“Nagisa, sweetie,” his mother says cheerily, “how are you feeling?”

Nagisa swallows. “What do you think of my hair?”

“I’d accept you for the way you are, honey,” his mother echoes, her gaze not quite focused. Nagisa winces as he smiles.

“You know,” Nagisa says, thinking of something that seemed like a forever ago. “Hair is an illusion.”

His mother blinks at him, not quite comprehending, but looking like she’s trying her hardest to all the same.

“Yeah,” Nagisa says. He places both his hands over his head (and catches a glimpse of himself in the reflection in the window and chokes on a sob). “If i tie my hair all the way up like this, it looks like I’m taller, right? But it also makes my hair look shorter, and…” Nagisa feels incredibly silly thinking this. “Imagine if I had long hair. I’m just tying it up.”

His mother stares at him.

Nagisa’s hands drop to his sides, face burning with embarrassment. “Nevermind.”

They go through the familiar, empty movements of preparing a dinner. He imagines it must taste like the same thing Nagisa’s been eating for the past fifteen years, and he misses it almost immediately. The texture of the vegetables are ashy on his tongue.

“Mom?” The words felt like sandpaper. This woman was not his mother.

What was it about insanity? Doing the same thing a hundred times and expecting a different result? Was Nagisa insane to keep going home and expecting her to finally see him?

Something is wrong.

“Mom?”

“Hi,” says the woman who wears his mother’s face. She smiles at him with a smile that has nothing behind it, and pulls out a chair for him. Nagisa steps around it and goes up to her, and she looks at him, but her eyes are unfocused.

Nagisa hugs her.

The woman lets out a soft laugh, and brings her hand up to pat his head, and if Nagisa closed his eyes and thought hard enough he could pretend that it was his mother.

“Do you miss me, mom?” Nagisa murmurs. “I miss you. Do you know that?”

“Of course,” the woman says.

Nagisa tightens his grip around her. Her arms are draped over his shoulders, her hand absently stroking his hair like she’d used to do when it fell to his shoulders. He could close his eyes and think hard enough and he could have an illusion of his mother back-

Nagisa wasn’t crazy, okay? He kept going back, and he kept getting pushed away, but he wasn’t insane, okay? A species could follow the same life cycle for millennia and still evolve! Nagisa could break out of this cycle, even if the same things happened over and over and over again!

"Magic isn't some leap of faith," Karma says, running a hand through his hair. "It may seem that way but magic runs on a set of strict principles and laws. It's simply a science we don't understand. The same way we can't overcome gravity with our minds, we can't bend around the confines of magic with our willpower."

Nagisa wrings his hands together. "We owe it to Kayano to try-"

"It's not about trying! It's about practicality! This isn't a storybook, this is real life!"

"So what? You're giving up?"

"I don't want to give up, okay? But there's no way-"

"You're the one who brought it up in the first place! That there might be a way to reverse it!"

"Well I want there to be! I wish there is! There just isn't, okay?! I want there to be!"

“There are labyrinths hidden in plain sight,” Kayano was telling them once. "Anything could be an illusion if you wanted it to be. It's just a matter of how you think of it." 

"So what?!" Nagisa curls into himself, and Karma's arms fly out to wrap around him. "You really believe there's no way? To bring them back?"

"I want to believe there is," Karma sobs. "I wish there is, okay? I wish there is but there isn’t!"

"I need to bring my mother back. I miss her. I don't know who that woman is."

Karma looks up at Nagisa with a hurt expression.

Nagisa rubs his arms. “It feels so hopeless, Karma. I don’t know what to do… I don’t want to give up, I don’t, but I feel like we’re stuck-”

Karma jolts forward. He shoves a hand into Nagisa’s pocket and pulls out Nagisa’s soul gem. 

Karma's eyes are wide and fearful. "Nagisa."

"There is a way. We'll find a way, okay?!"

Nagisa cries. "I’m scared, Karma! I don’t know what to do!"

"Nagisa!"

"-I don't know what to do!!"

If being a Witch was an inevitable fate for all magicals, and they were just delaying it with grief seeds… was his mother completely forgetting him the same? Was he just pretending it wasn’t, delaying the inevitable?

It wasn’t.

It wasn’t.

And he goes back one last time, because he had to know if it would work. Finds a wing and puts on lipstick and wears a pretty dress, and then pushes the door open and greets his mother.

And his mother’s gaze sweeps over him like he’s not quite there and she says, to the wall behind him, “Hi, sweetie?”

Nagisa twists his hands in the skirt. “Mom? What do you think of my look?”

His mother’s mouth opens, and she begins to speak, but then she pauses again, and for a moment Nagisa thinks, this is it,

but then she says, in an empty faux cheerful voice, “I’ll accept your fashion no matter how you wish to wear it, dear.”

And Nagisa rips the wig and dress off and wipes the makeup away and asks her the same question again, and she gives him the same answer.

He wasn’t. Insane.

He wasn’t.

Something is wrong.

“Witches are…” Korosenai says, “being ripped apart and put back together, in all the wrong places. A storybook torn up and stuck together all out of order.”

(And Karma scrambles for the grief seeds, and Nagisa has his soul in his palm, and he thinks he hears his mother calling him. But was it her, or just someone he’ll never get back?)

And then he's five and a half years old, sitting on a woman's lap, and she strokes his hair the way his mother always did and asks him what he wished for.

“Remember,” his mother had said, the book in one hand and Nagisa still on her lap, “it's not real.” 

A lot of things, Nagisa thinks, are real, even if they seem like they aren't. (He does wonder if the reverse is true. Could something not be real even if it seemed so much like it was?) 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi again! If you read it till the very end... congratulations? 
> 
> I will say that this fic is definitely a lot longer than I had meant to write it to be. I don't think I fully managed to convey the Effect I truly wanted with this fic (and it definitely took a turn I wasn't expecting it to go when I first started this).  
> I'm hoping that it tripped you out reading this as it did me writing this, but I do hope the ending was... worth it? I'm sorry if you were expecting them to go home happily ever after. You know I'm not the best at ending fics like... this. (@friends do not call me out)
> 
> How does this narrative end? It's a story broken up and put back together in all the wrong ways. Everything happens in a cycle - the universe, Nagisa's narration of events, his slowly devolving sanity... you know. Fun stuff. The puzzle pieces start to not fit together quite right for Nagisa and maybe they never have. What happened to Kayano? Or Karma? I don't know.  
> Spoiler alert (is it considered a spoiler if you've finished this fic?): Nagisa turns into a Witch. The end.  
> But not really, because he always already one at the start. Now just like Kayano, he gets to watch the car crash over and over and over again. 
> 
> Thank you once again to Liv for making this amazing event and these sets of contributions happen, and to ColoredMoon for their artistry! Love you all!


End file.
